


Turning Tides

by MacPye



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-24
Updated: 2012-04-24
Packaged: 2017-11-04 06:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MacPye/pseuds/MacPye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Reichenbach. </p>
<p>This is a possibility. Just one of many.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turning Tides

John Watson takes a bite out of his apple, his focus on the newspaper on the table. One of the most prominent headlines on the page before him  reads MYSTERY SNIPER STRIKES AGAIN, with the by-line NOW FIVE KILLED ALL IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. He smoothes the page down a little to read.

The apartment around him is small but light, and incredibly impersonal. The only hint someone actually lives there comes from the assortment if pictures and newspaper cuttings, either framed or tacked to the wall as they are.

One picture shows John with what could only be his sister, another with a small group of serious-faced people, including an elderly lady, whom he flanks with a man with grey hair and a tight-lipped mouth. Slightly behind them stand a younger woman and a man in a suit, somehow the odd one out in the picture. The rest of the pictures show him with a man with a distant look and dark curls.

John eats his apple and drinks his tea. He cleans up his breakfast items, grabs his coat and exits the flat.

 

 

In another part of town, the serious-faced, grey-haired man opens a set of heavy, dark terracotta curtains. His name is Greg Lestrade and he seems relaxed, if out of place in the rather high-end Bayswater flat he woke up in. He rummages around the large bedroom, picking up discarded pieces of clothing from around the bed – these are the only signs of untidiness. He disappears into the bathroom, there is the sound of running water.

 

 

In a large, gloomy office, the suited man, Mycroft Holmes, is going through some files stacked on his desk. All is silent with the exception of paper rustling, until his phone vibrates on the mahogany table top.

He checks it, his face first puzzled, then showing a sequence of complex emotions. He sits back in his chair, still holding his mobile, and stares at the ceiling.

 

 

John reaches the A&E of a large hospital. He has already changed into his scrubs and greets his colleagues cheerily enough.

 

 

Lestrade exits the bathroom, his hair still wet from washing, the clothes he’d picked up from the floor discarded in a laundry basket. With an unlikely luxurious silk bathrobe wrapped around him, he makes his way to a wardrobe. He slides open a door to reveal a small selection of his suits and shirts. A basket on the floor of the wardrobe contains some of his boxers, another a few pairs of socks. There is a hint of a few sets of far better suits in the unopened part of the wardrobe, just visible in the gloom next to Lestrade’s suits.

Lestrade picks a suit, shirt, socks and boxers, and lays them out on the half-made bed.

He is just buttoning his shirt when his phone beeps. He sighs, picks it up from the bedside table, but when he sees the number, he smiles and answers.

“Hey,” he says, “what’s bothering you?”

The voice on the other side of the connection isn’t intelligible and talks for quite a while. Lestrade’s face turns ashen, his eyes wide, and he sits down on the bed.

 

 

John has just finished delegating a patient to cardiology, when his phone buzzes. He frowns at the number, but picks up, anyway.

“Mycroft,” he says.

“John,” says Mycroft, his voice calm, but not his usual imperial. “There is something we need to discuss.”

“There’s nothing I really wish to discuss with you,” John says brusquely.

“Please, John, this is  _important_ ,” says Mycroft, and his tone makes John pause.

“Okay,” says John, slowly, in non-committal. “The fact that you’re bothering to invite me first must make up for something.”

Mycroft sighs, and John almost feels sorry for him.

“I would like to meet you over lunch,” says Mycroft. “There is a bistro near the Diogenes.”

“I only have an hour,” says John.

“That will have to do,” says Mycroft.

“Fine. I’ll see you there,” says John, and hangs up before Mycroft can say more. A man has been brought in who bleeds profusely from a wound in his shoulder and John rushes over to help.

 

 

Lestrade enters the floor he works on in a hurry, and Sally Donovan is already there to meet him.

“Another possible sniper incident, sir,” she says without preamble, and Lestrade halts.

“Where?” he asks.

“Kensington,” says Donovan. “Victim’s been rushed into hospital.”

“Alive?” says Lestrade incredulously. “The sniper’s losing his touch!” He looks around to find Anderson arriving, too.

“Right,” says Lestrade, wrestling his coat back on, “let’s get going, see if we can find any useful new evidence for a change.”

 

 

The scene of the new shooting incident didn’t turn up any new evidence, simply more puzzles, and it wasn’t for the first time that Lestrade cursed the fact that he couldn’t consult with Sherlock Holmes, anymore. He was half tempted to have a chat with Mycroft, but he thought it would require too much  “legwork”, so he hadn’t yet bothered.

The scene wrapped up, he delegates the questioning of the victim – if at all possible – to Donovan, and drives to another posh area of town. Near a quiet bistro, he parks in a side street, and makes his way to the little French lunchroom. It is very quiet, and he can see through the large window that it only has one patron. As he opens the door, John Watson approaches.

 

John does a double take.

“Greg,” he says, and he isn’t sure if he should be surprised or not.

“Hi, John,” says Lestrade, smiling kindly. He holds open the door to John, and they enter the bistro.

 

The single patron, sitting at a small round table, facing the door, looks up. Of course it’s Mycroft Holmes. John silently sits down across from him on the elegant wrought iron fold-away chair, and looks away awkwardly when he notices Lestrade has squeezed Mycroft’s shoulder and allows his hand to linger. John clears his throat, Lestrade smiles at Mycroft’s upturned face, and sits down between him and John.

Without much of an introduction, Mycroft takes a mobile from an inside pocket, selects something in its menu, puts it down on the table and delicately pushes it towards John.

John looks from the phone to Mycroft, and raises an eyebrow.

“It’s a phone.”

“It’s  _my_  phone, John. My  _private_  phone,” says Mycroft. “And I want you to take a look at that text.” His long-fingered indicates the phone again.

John picks it up, warily, and reads the text.

I HAVE IT

“That’s it?” asks John. “You have me spend my lunch hour with you for this? ‘I have it’. I have what? Is this a prank?”

Mycroft studies him, his face unreadable. “Look at the sender, John.”

John looks at the number. It’s one he distantly recognises, and he frowns at it, trying to jog his memory. And then he sees the pattern which allowed him to memorise it all those years ago.

He swallows and stares, the phone tightly cradled in his grip. He finally finds his voice again, and says, “Are you,” he stops and clears his throat, “are you _sure_  –”

“Experts are currently trying to trace the sender,” Mycroft says quietly. “However, there are only three people who have this number, and two of them sit here at this table with me.”

John swallows again, and looks back down at the darkened screen of the phone. He swipes the pad of his thumb across the screen, lighting it up again, to read the message another time.

“What does it mean?” He hands the phone back to Mycroft, who makes the same gesture as John has just made, his gaze caressing the message.

Lestrade looks from Mycroft to John, chewing his bottom lip. “Obviously, he thinks Mycroft will understand. But quite apart from that, he’s reaching out.”

John looks intently at Lestrade, his eyes alight with hope. “You really think – you really think it’s –” He can’t quite finish his sentence.

Lestrade licks his lips and nudges Mycroft. Mycroft stretches his neck, his nostrils flaring, shooting Lestrade a meaningful look, before deflating again, reaching with a hand to smooth over his eyebrows.

“…I had a little chat with a Miss Hooper,” he says.

There is a rushing sound in John’s ears, and he is very painfully aware of the beating of his heart. He stares and stares at Mycroft, willing him to continue.

“While her story was disjointed, as she was obviously unwilling to tell me, having promised – well, having promised him not to, it seems she and – and my little brother cooked up quite a plot,” Mycroft says, his eyes on his hands, which are clenched around the phone.

Silently, Lestrade runs a hand soothingly over Mycroft’s, to release the tension which has the phone digging into Mycroft’s skin. It’s a gesture so heartfelt and intimate, that something in John’s chest constricts, and he swallows hard and looks away for a moment, blinking frantically.

“I – I had some idea, obviously,” Mycroft admits, after a few moments. “But I thought it best to allow him time. I thought he would have some reason for wanting to disappear completely. I let it rest. But when I received this text, I stared asking questions.”

 “I think,” said Lestrade, his hand making another soothing pass over Mycroft’s, “that we should be prepared to meet him again, at any given time. You know how his flair for dramatics is,” he grins a little, “but let’s try not to punch him.”

“Too hard,” says Mycroft quietly, but there’s a hint of mirth in his tone. John can’t help but allow a corner of his mouth to quirk up.

It feels as if the blood in his veins has suddenly started to thaw, a warm, tingling rushing through his body, an awareness of his own presence in its entirety, the breath going in through his nostrils, the tiny sounds of coffee being made loud in his ears.

He takes another breath, his chest expanding, and he notices that, for the first time since the funeral, his shoulder doesn’t hurt.


End file.
